


a ghost in our ghost town

by Sixteenthdays



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Missing Scene, Relationship Study, immediately pre-doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29522961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixteenthdays/pseuds/Sixteenthdays
Summary: “Oh! Niki!”And she must be asleep, and she must be dreaming, and maybe she’s collapsed in the snowstorm outside and hallucinating as she dies, because sheknows that voice. She knows it at once, even with the strange echo behind it and a brightness in the words she can’t remember hearing since- since the revolution, she thinks.She doesn’t want to open her eyes, but this world has never cared for what she wants, anyways; and so she does.Wilbur Soot is smiling at her.
Relationships: Niki | Nihachu & Wilbur Soot
Comments: 5
Kudos: 32





	a ghost in our ghost town

The snow is only blowing harder across the tundra as the night deepens and the wind picks up, and Niki grits her teeth, trudges onwards. She came prepared for this, in thick boots and a good coat and muffs over her ears, but the wind seems to cut down to her bones nonetheless, the gusting snowflakes chilling her cheeks and stinging her eyes. 

It’s like almost the world itself is reaching down to tell her this is a bad idea, but she doesn’t care. Can’t make herself care. There’s something hurting in her chest, something burning, and she doesn’t know if it was Wilbur’s death or Ranboo’s words or Tommy’s _triumphant return_ that lit it, but if she doesn’t breathe it out and set everything around her aflame she thinks it might kill her. 

To burn, or to burn? 

She can see a glimpse of warm yellow light up ahead, through the white sheets of shifting snow, and her heart rises in her chest.

Technoblade’s house. It must be. 

Right as she sets her eyes on it, though, the wind starts gusting even harder, lashing at her face and blowing hard enough that she nearly loses her balance in the deep, untrodden snow. She stumbles, curses under her breath. 

There’s a copse of trees nearby, evergreens, still thick with needles and surrounded by hardy shrubs. Niki changes direction, stomps over through the drifts and ducks under a branch into the small dark packet of natural shelter to wait out the worst of the snowstorm. 

The wind fades out as she slips between the branches. The snow is much thinner on the ground here, most of it walled out by the trees and shrubbery, only a light dusting here and there. She sighs, drops down to sit on the ground, snow sticking to her pants, and closes her eyes for a moment.

“Oh! Niki!” 

And she must be asleep, and she must be dreaming, and maybe she’s collapsed in the snowstorm outside and hallucinating as she dies, because she _knows that voice_. She knows it at once, even with the strange echo behind it and a brightness in the words she can’t remember hearing since- since the revolution, she thinks. 

She doesn’t want to open her eyes, but this world has never cared for what she wants, anyways; and so she does. 

Wilbur Soot is smiling at her. 

It’s soft, fond, like he’s genuinely happy to see her, like he missed her, rather than the hard, sharp thing that exile had whittled his smile into over weeks and months. He’s wearing his glasses, a red beanie, a soft yellow sweater that almost seems too bright and warm for their little shelter from the snow. 

He’s also dead. 

He looks washed-out, colorless, like a photograph gone pale and grey with sun and time. If she looks hard, she can see the trees behind him through his just slightly translucent shape.

“Are you okay?” he asks, tipping his head a little, and the concern is so clear and real that it _hurts_. “You look cold… oh! You dyed your hair.” 

She shrinks back into herself, hates herself for doing it. When she buries her face in her hands, her skin feels cold. Her fingers dig into her hair, nails scratching against her skull. “Stop.” 

“…Niki?” 

And god, it sounds so much like him, it sounds _so much_ like him. 

“You’re not real,” she says, and her voice sounds impossibly calm to her own ears. “You’re dead. Go away.” 

“Well, I am dead,” he agrees after a moment, sounding perfectly unbothered about the fact. “But I’m real, too, I think. And-“ a brief pause, then, “Tommy only ever tells me to go away like that when he really shouldn’t be alone.” 

Tommy. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy. Of course it always comes back to _Tommy_. 

“I’m sure,” she says, can’t keep the bitterness out of her voice, doesn’t even really bother to try. If she’s losing her mind, she may as well take the chance to say the things she always shouts at his back as he walks away in her dreams. “There were other people who needed you too, you know, not just _Tommy_. There were other people who _loved_ you.” 

She drops a hand to the ground, digs fingers into the snow and dirt. “And then you went and _died_. So I don’t- what the _hell_ do you think you’re doing here _now_?” 

He’s quiet for long enough that she dares to hope he’s gone, that her words have somehow banished him, but when she dares to lift her head again he’s still persistently _there_ , sitting cross-legged in front of her, concern and confusion etched on his face. It’s so much worse than the version of him she sees in her nightmares, still, the sharp-edged one with the cracked eyes and the torn jacket; so much crueler. 

“I thought…” he says, trails off, picks at the hem of his sweater. “Nobody is ever terribly happy to see me, you know. Tommy yells, and Phil always looks so _sad_ , and Fundy…” He goes quiet for a minute, then sighs. “I have to look after Tommy, I _have_ to, but I figured it would probably be better I just stayed out of everyone’s ways. I don’t want to cause any more hurt.”

And she thinks of Fundy, and his lovely, impossible stories about a ghost with Wilbur’s face and all of his goodness and none of his anger or grief or memories, ground out in furious, frustrated tones. Wishful thinking, she’d thought it. A coping mechanism- maybe not the healthiest one, but she was nobody to judge. 

And now that ghost is looking at her, looking right _through_ her, and either Fundy was telling the truth or she’s gone just as mad as he has, and she probably owes him an apology either way. 

“You didn’t answer,” she says, and wants to sound angry but her voice just comes out hollow, this time. “What are you doing here?” 

“Oh,” he says, rubs the back of his neck and tugs at his beanie, a nervous mannerism she’d almost forgotten, and it’s so _him_ it makes her want to cry. “Ah, Phil and Techno are really busy right now. I guess they’re getting ready for some big event tomorrow? And I guess I kept getting in the way, so I left, but then it started snowing, so now I’m here. And…”

He trails off for a moment, looks at her, and it’s not fair that it feels just like it always has, like he’s seeing right through her, and it’s not fair that it makes her want to _hide_ like it never has before. “And you looked cold,” he eventually says, and he sounds so sad and so concerned and so _himself,_ “and you’re a long way from home.” 

And those words make her want to laugh, or maybe cry, and she makes an awful strangled noise that might be both, because-

She doesn’t even know what home means anymore. Maybe it’s gone, burned and bombed out of existence; maybe you can rebuild something with every board and brick set right and still have it never be the same. Maybe home died a long time ago, and its ghost is sitting in front of her, smiling gentle and sad. She doesn’t know. She doesn’t know. 

“Wilbur, I don’t even know where home is,” she says, and the words come out quiet and uneven and wrecked. “I don’t even know if it’s real.” 

He’s quiet, at that, and then he stands and crosses their small, snowy shelter to sit down at her side. He’s cold- of course he is- but just his presence is reassuring. If she had the energy still she might hate herself for that, for still feeling so safe with someone who razed her home and burned her dreams and left her behind broken, but she doesn’t, right now. Right now, she’s just exhausted and cold and lost, and so she leans into his side and imagines that he’s warm. 

“Come on now, Niki,” he says, fond and almost teasing. “Home’s wherever the people you love are.” 

And she almost wants to say _who_ , wants to beg and plead, _who’s left?_ because Wilbur is dead and Fundy is falling to pieces and she doesn’t even know where she stands with Ranboo anymore and she doesn’t even want to _think_ about Tommy and Tubbo, and who’s _left_ , but-

Unbidden, she thinks of Puffy. Warm smiles, warmer hugs. 

Even if L’Manburg burns tomorrow, even if everything she cares about goes up in flames again, every building and every tree, she thinks that maybe Puffy can still be home. 

And if Puffy can, maybe…

Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe the fire’s not quite dead yet.

She twists to look over her shoulder, between the trees. The winter squall outside is quieting down, now, and she can see the light of Technoblade’s cabin between the trees again. It looks warm and close and so very tempting. The walk back will be long, and cold, and lonely.

She imagines knocking on the door, imagines offering them whatever help she can give, imagines watching L’Manburg burn at her feet, and the thought of it just makes her feel cold. 

She doesn’t know what she wants, anymore, but she doesn’t think it’s that. 

“Wilbur,” she says, staring down at the snow and slush between her boots, “will you walk home with me?” 

She glances up just in time to see him smile, bright and warm. 

“Course I will,” he says. “Just as soon as the storm is done.” 

**Author's Note:**

> so on the day before doomsday a good friend of mine said she would really like to see niki go to join techno and phil and run into ghostbur on the way there, and i said, and i quote, "if this doesn’t happen i Will write it myself and that is a promise", and i finally have!! and it only took me a month and a half. 
> 
> anyways, i'm haunted by the fact that niki always thought ghostbur was a figment of fundy's imagination, and i think they should have had a chance to talk. i think it might've done her some good.
> 
> title from 'depression' by the homeless gospel choir


End file.
